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Editorial

Neighborhood transformed

Campus Partners gave OSU gateway a new face; more to come

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Ohio State University and the city of Columbus are interdependent. What’s good for one is
generally good for the other, and the university-area revitalization undertaken in recent years by
the Campus Partners redevelopment organization is a prime example of this, benefiting both town and
gown.

OSU President E. Gordon Gee recalls first visiting the university in 1990 and being impressed
when he approached from the northwest. When he later came back to campus from the east, though, the
picture was different: Dilapidated buildings, vacant storefronts and seedy bars were what greeted
him and thousands of other visitors each year, causing some to think twice about sending their kids
to OSU.

The group’s flagship project to date has been the South Campus Gateway, a $154 million mixed-use
development, which replaced a row of rundown storefronts and bars along High Street in 2005, after
10 years of work to acquire property, develop plans and get all the necessary permits and
infrastructure improvements. It created a welcoming entry to campus from Downtown and the Short
North arts district, bringing a movie theater, restaurants, office space and apartments to what
rightfully should be prime real estate across from one of the country’s biggest colleges. It offers
amenities to those who live and work in the area, and provides a much better environment and first
impression for students coming to OSU from out of town.

Columbus police report that crime in the campus area, something that has long worried students
and their parents, is on the decline; they cite the Campus Gateway development as one factor in
that.

Now, Campus Partners is branching out into other projects east of High Street that are designed
to further enhance and stabilize a neighborhood still marred by blight. These include 40 new
rent-to-own homes and 500 renovated subsidized-housing units that will ensure a mix of affordable
but well-maintained housing will remain. This spring, work will begin on a $12 million project to
renovate 23 duplexes and rowhouses along E. 11 {+t}{+h} Avenue leading to I-71 from campus.

These types of projects likely would not have happened anytime soon without the work of Campus
Partners. The organization is able to take a long view of the payoff of a project and look at it in
terms of the overall benefit to the university, its students and the city.

With about 50,000 students at its main campus, OSU is truly a city within the city. As the
university grew over the decades, the city grew up around it. Like many urban universities in
cities from Philadelphia to Los Angeles, the area around campus went downhill as more people left
for the suburbs from the 1960s on.

It’s no coincidence that the revitalization of the campus area is happening as other urban areas
of Columbus also are on the upswing. It takes a lot of hard work and investment. But once an area
begins to come to life again, it tends to have a radiating impact and lift other boats with the
rising tide.